The Destruction of Dying
by BittersweetLove94
Summary: John's been living two lives for months now, trying to force himself to love Riley whilst growing bitter about his feelings for Cameron. He has no idea what to do until reality strikes in the form of Allison Young.
1. Bleeding Metal

It was like lightening -appearing from a point several feet above the above the road. At first it was one streak but a few seconds passed and the lightening turned into a brilliant blue bubble that crackled and pulsed. Occasionally sparks would leave the bubble, hitting parked cars and sign posts but it was late at night so the rouge lightening caused no real damage. Eventually the bubble faded to reveal a young girl of sixteen, who was hiding her naked body by crouching on the floor. When the crackling finally seized and the lightening disappeared completely it left a huge crater in the road with the young girl in the middle. For a moment the girl seemed shaken and didn't move but slowly she collected the courage to stand up and survey her surroundings. The first thing she should have been aware of was her nakedness but, besides her weak attempts to shield her bare skin from the cold, she made very little signs of noticing. Her eyes were wide, her mouth ajar and she was staring at the scenery around her -turning slowly to take in each building, the green palm trees and polished cars. It was all so clean and undisturbed. Nothing like the harsh and decaying world Allison Young had grown up in.

A wolf-whistle from behind made Allison's heart jump. Before the street had been so quiet, but after hearing the whistle, Allison felt the street had suddenly come to life with the sounds of chatter and whooping. Allison spun on her feet to see a group of seven or eight figures walking in her direction. They were too far away to make out any features, or to tell which of them were male and which of them were female but she was still close enough for them to see she was completely naked. Instantly she remembered what John Connor had told her before she departed. She had to find clothes then track his past self down. He'd made her memorize an address and then warned her of all the things she could and couldn't do but he had never really explained why she was being send almost twenty years into the past.

Her military training finally kicked in and Alison turned to sprint into the nearest alleyway. She was fast, she'd always been fast, and it didn't take long for her to hide her exposed flesh in the shadows of the towering buildings around her.

She listened to the voices of the teenagers for what felt like forever and only came out of the shadows when she was sure they had gone. Her current mission was to track down some clothes and, looking around the suburban street, Allison was sure the only way to get clothes would be to break into someone's house. She didn't like the idea of entering another person's home and taking what didn't belong to her. It was immoral and not to mention totally against the law in this time but it was better than running around naked for the rest of the night and, when she looked at the bigger pictures, stealing a set of clothes from someone really wasn't a big deal. Finding a house wasn't a case of stalking a house and finding out who lived inside so she could find the perfect clothes in house that promised the least possibility of being jailed. It really was just smashing and crawling through the first window of the first house she came to.

She hit the glass glittered floor of a sitting room hard but was not phased by the sharp pain in her side. After just a few seconds she looked up at the room she'd landed in, it was large and full of expensive things. Every object around her was more beautiful than anything Allison had ever owned. The sofas were made of brown leather and a large part of the room was taken up by a marble fireplace. When Alison walked across the carpet her feet sank into the comfortable thread and it was nothing compared to the shrapnel covered flooring Alison was used to. She walked to the laundry room, having no desire to entire the same room the owners of the house slept in she planned to just steal some of the dirty laundry and run, and turned the light on. The room was neat, with a washing machine and dryer in it, clothes sat in piles on a table and in a blue basket next to the washing machine. Instantly, Allison moved to the piles of clothes on the table and she began to hunt through the clothing. The first item of women's clothing she came to was a pair of jeans and a pink top. The jeans fitted her but the shirt was at least two sizes too big for her, but it would have to do, Allison needed to get out of the house before the guilt of breaking into someone's home made her put the clothes back.

She made for the door, intending to leave through the window she came in, but then stopped in her tracks because the light from the room next door suddenly flickered to life. Allison's heart stopped. She'd been caught. Meaning she'd be taken into jail and charged with trespassing and thieving. She would be convicted and her mission to track down John Connor would be severely delayed. Or, even worse still, she'd go out there and find the innocent owner of the house with a gun in their hands -likely they'd never used such a weapon and then someone would get hurt.

Allison hadn't moved but she could hear someone edging closer to the door to the room. Every time the floor creaked from the weight of the person's feet she felt the seconds she had left to act disappear. Until she was sure the person was standing in the doorway and she did the first thing her military trained mind thought of -she spun on her heels and dived to a tool box she'd noticed earlier. The box was stashed under the table; Allison pulled the lid open and grabbed the first object she could. When she stood back up she saw she was holding a long screwdriver with a red handle. The house owner was standing in front of her now, wide-eyed with a shotgun in his hands.

"Don't move." The man warned in a husky voice.

He was middle-aged, overweight and was balding. The little hair he did have on his head and greyed and his face was strongly creased. Allison would have guessed he was around fifty. She held the screwdriver high, knowing she would never actually use it as a weapon and would, in fact, rather be shot than stab him with the tool but she could at least pretend to be threatening. Perhaps then she could get to John Connor as fast as possible.

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><p>Riley pulled her math book away from John and stared down at the equations on the pages. The pair had been spending a lot of time together lately, so much time that Riley had been forced to do her homework with John by her side.<p>

"It's impossible! It doesn't add up." Riley exclaimed in frustration as she threw the book down on the table.

John couldn't be much help to her. He could hack anything and he understood robotics better than most engineers but when it came to math he was absolutely pathetic. Cameron was good at math, he could have easily asked her to help them with Riley's homework but Cameron and Riley had a very strained relationship. At first John couldn't understand the difficult relationship the pair had, of course Cameron being an anti-social machine didn't help, but the pair had seemed to clash from day one. After their trip to Mexico, John had suspected Riley of being more than what she appeared and found himself wondering more often everyday if she knew what Cameron really was.. He wanted to say he trusted Riley completely but some of the things she did made him feel less and less like John Baum. She'd put herself between John and a machine, she'd ignored the waiter in Mexico when he'd uttered John's real name and then smashed his camera when the man had tried to bribe John, but most of all, whenever she stood in the same room as Cameron, Riley looked close to tears and everything about her changed completely. Around Riley, he felt like John Connor, which was unwise and dangerous and if his mother ever knew what John suspected she would have them shipped off to a new state before John could even say goodbye to Riley. And that was just how his mother would react; he wouldn't allow himself to image how Cameron would react.

"Maybe you copied it down wrong." John suggested. He couldn't help with the equations but he could at least make her feel better about not figuring it out.

"Are you saying I'm stupid?" She said with a smile on her face.

John smiled back at her and took the book off the table.

"No." He told her confidently

"Well I must be stupid if I can't even copy down one simple sum." Riley pressed the topic.

John looked at the equation again. Just like before, all John saw on the paper was a collection of numbers and symbols that didn't work together.

"Just…tell your teacher you took the wrong book home or something." John said.

Riley didn't reply at first but just tilting her head and gave him a look that suggested she wasn't impressed with his excuse.

"Or I could tell him my dog ate it." She suggested in a sarcastically upbeat voice.

John shook his head and laughed, there was no way he was going to win against Riley and the homework. So he just accepted defeat and moved away from the dining table. He poured two glasses of orange juice and handed one to Riley before slouching against the kitchen counter. Riley took a sip of her juice and spoke;

"Where's your mum?" She asked, apparently giving up on her homework as well.

John's mother had left early this morning with Cameron. There had been a lot of strange murders in San Francisco. Two Jenny Quinn's had been murdered in the last week. Both Cameron and Derek had no idea who she was but John's mum had insisted on checking it out anyway, there was two other Jenny Quinn's alive in San Francisco, as far as John was aware, so his mum had driven up to protect them.

"She took Cameron shopping." He lied. Even as he spoke he was conscious of the sharp intake of breath Riley took at the mention of Cameron's name.

John edged closer to the table with a newly formed smile on his face. He placed the glass on the table and crouched down till he was almost at Riley's height.

"They'll be gone most of the day." He said as he brushed his fingers against her cheek and through her blonde hair and secretly trying to make the smile return to her face.

Acting illogically and completely on impulse, he pulled her lips to his. The kiss started off soft, John took her bottom lip between his and Riley put her hands on his chest. He could feel her smiling against his lips and then pulled away - to his great dismay.

"I'm supposed to be doing my homework." She said with a smile.

John groaned but didn't believe that Riley would actually return to her homework. And he was right. She stood up and took his hand in hers, then she directed him to the living room and, with an unexpected force, pushed John down on the couch.

She dropped her body on top of his, straddling his hips and practically smashing her lips against his. At first John's whole body was rigid and resistance. His mind kept asking if this was what he really wanted, if Riley was what he really wanted because, at the end of the day, he knew that he would always care about Cameron, a cyborg, more, but he hardly had time to care before his body reacted to her touch and blinded him to all emotions. He put his hands against her thighs and gradually dragged them up until they were holding her hips. His tongue brushed against her lips, there was a brief moment of anticipation but then John parted his lips to allow Riley access to his mouth. She massaged his tongue with her own and raked her fingernails through his hair. Without meaning to, and certainly without thinking about his actions John moaned loudly and repositioned his hands to brush against her jaw line and tangle in her hair. It was hard for him to consider Riley anything more than a friend but it was better than admitting he was actually attracted to a machine. He knew he was a terrible for leading Riley on and he felt bad for kissing her even if that wasn't made completely clear at that point in time.

The sound of the doorbell echoed through the house. John managed to tell Riley to "ignore it" whilst concentrating on her body against his and her tongue in his mouth. But whoever was at the door did not accept John ignoring them. Again the doorbell rang and again John ignored it. Then there was knocking and chapping at the letterbox until finally John groaned and asked Riley to move off of him so he could tell whoever was at the door to go away. Whoever was at the door was making a repetitive dull banging on the door now, John waited just behind the door for several seconds. Normally unusual knocking wouldn't be something to worry about, but for John it meant pulling a 9mm from the drawer in the table beside the door and putting it in his belt, behind his back.

He took an intake of breath and reassured himself that it couldn't possibly be a Terminator before finally pulled the door open. At first he thought there was no one there. When he looked out he saw nothing but the front garden but then he heard a whimper from below and looked down at the floor.

John had seen a lot of things, things normal people couldn't even imagine but what he found on the floor in front of his door shocked John. It was Cameron, wearing an overlarge pink shirt and a pair of stone-washed jeans. She was bare foot and slumped against the wall outside the front door. Crimson blood stained the majority of her shirt and she was holding her right shoulder. She rolled her head and moaned repeatedly. If John hadn't heard her knocking he would have thought she was unconscious. A logical mind would have thought the situation through and considered the fact that Cameron was a cyborg and therefore could not be dying in front of him but instead John panicked and instantly did what his mother had trained him to do.

"Oh…God." He pulled her through the threshold and closed the door behind him. Once the public world had been taken out of the equation John pulled Cameron's bleeding body into his arms and carried her upstairs.

"What's going on?" Riley's voice asked from somewhere behind John.

He didn't turn to look at her but could guess that Riley was somewhere at the bottom of the stairs.

"Riley you need to go home." He told her with his eyes on Cameron's wound.

"No. I'll go call an ambulance." Riley asked, completely ignoring John.

"I said go!" John shouted. Even if he believed Riley knew more than she let on he could not let her become part of this side of his life.

He didn't hear her go; his mind was completely focused on Cameron's bleeding body. How his day could go from two extremes in such a short time was impossible to guess at, it was simply something he had to accept.

He kicked the door of Cameron's bedroom open and put her body on the perfectly made bed. Cameron's room was spotless, probably because she spent very little time in it and it was only there for show. The room had flowery walls and a small single bed, as well as a large wooden wardrobe. Besides that the room was almost completely bare.

Cameron's body shuttered violently against the bed and she made a very human moan of pain. John was starting to panic, he wasn't trained in medicine but surely that shouldn't have made any difference to this situation. John considered the possibility of a disturbance that had been created in her chip during a fight causing the human reaction.

Despite these thoughts of reason, John still pulled a large case of weapons from under Cameron's bed and hunted for a knife. He ripped the knife across the sleeve of her shirt and pulled the material away to reveal a bullet wound.

"John…" Cameron uttered in a barely audible voice.

John paid little attention to it; he was concentrated on the wound. There was too much blood, a lot more than he would have expected from Cameron's cyborg body. He tried to clear some of the blood with the sleeve he'd just ripped off of her shirt but when he did this she screamed and writhed so much that John had to hold her down against the bed.

"Shh…calm down." He tried to calm her but with little avail.

He held her shoulder and examined the wound. It was definitely a bullet hole, there was no arguing with that but everything about the wound was completely human. No metal. Was it possible that this girl wasn't Cameron? She had to be human, therefore she needed a hospital, there was nothing John could do for her here. But what if she was actually machine and was just hiding it really well? He had about thirty seconds to decide.

Of course, John decided to take the possibly-human-Cameron to the hospital, he couldn't let a human being die under the possibility that it might mean a few people finding out about the Machines. When he ran into the emergency room with Cameron's bleeding, dying body in his arms a group of Doctor's and nurses were by his side almost immediately.

A Doctor and two nurses took her away on a stretcher -proclaiming the she needed surgery now or she was going to die- whilst a third nurse stayed behind to get John's details. But John could do very little, he couldn't give away his true identity and, because he and Cameron were both fugitives, they had no insurance. John told the nurse he had no idea who she was and that he'd found her bleeding out on the street. He hoped that her critical situation meant they would act now and then try and track down her real family and insurance details later because between now and then he could figure out a way of breaking her out and putting her into hiding.

A greater concern than insurance was the possibility of the surgeons finding an endo-skeleton under her skin instead of bones. But an hour passed and John frantically paced the distance of the waiting room over and over again but didn't hear any panicked voices talking about robots and metal. Which should have put his mind at ease but instead just brought up more questions. If the girl in the surgery room wasn't metal then who the hell was she?

He should leave, he knew staying in the hospital would only create more questions but even when he tried to leave Definitely-Human-Cameron he only got as far as the farthest end of the car park before the guilt of leaving the girl set in. She sought him out when she was hurt, it was clearly a great trouble to her, it had nearly cost her, her life (John didn't want to think that she still could pay for her life) he couldn't just walk away and leave her in this mess. And then maybe a T-888 was on her back, John had never even considered the possibility before he sat down on the bench at the side of the car park and really thought about it. The whole situation was too much, John groaned in frustration and did the only thing he was sure would make some difference, he phoned his mum.

"John?" Her voice asked after the third ring.

John quickly told her the date then quickly explained the situation; "Mum, I need your help. This girl-" He was very clear not to tell her mum the girl looked exactly like Cameron. "-she turned up at the house with a bullet through her shoulder. I don't know what to do!"

"Calm down. What have you done so far?"

"I didn't know what to do." John gushed. He knew his mother would be furious when she heard what he'd done. "She was dying, she needed surgery so I…I took her to the hospital.

Silence.

"Mum?" John asked after several seconds of quiet.

"Where are you now?" She finally asked.

"I'm outside, on a bench. Why?" John furrowed his eyebrows.

"Go home, John."

"What?" John suddenly sounded angry. "No, I can't leave her. What's she going to do on her own? She almost died because of me! Getting to me!"

"And you think she'd want you to endanger your life for her?" His mum also sounded angry.

"I'm not endangering my life. There's no metal here."

"It's likely she's a resistance fighter, the hospital is not going to be pleased when she wakes up and they found out she literally doesn't exist."

"I'm not leaving."

Again silence.

"Mum, come home please. I need you."

"You wouldn't need me if you just stopped acting like a child!" His mother sounded furious."

"I did what I thought was right! She was dying."

"Just get out of there now." She sounded furious now.

John didn't speak for a while. He needed his mum to calm down a little before he spoke again;

"Can you come home please?"

"Sure. There's only one Jenny Quinn left and I'm sure she'd be safer there than here. It's getting late so I reckon we could get home by tomorrow."

John thanked her then hung up without saying goodbye. He had more important things on his mind.

After giving himself a long-winded pep talk, John walked through the Emergency room doors again.

"Hi. There was a girl brought in here about an hour and a half ago with a bullet through her shoulder, I was just wondering how she was."

"Are you family?" The woman behind the reception desk asked.

"No." John replied. "I don't even know her I just found her on the street and brought her in."

"Do you know her name?" The woman continued.

"No. I don't know anything about her."

"Do you know which shoulder it is?" She asked sarcastically.

"Right." John replied, refusing to let her sarcasm bother him.

The woman gave him a look that could have easily been mistaken for annoyance then picked up the receiver of an old fashioned phone and punched in a few numbers.

"I've got a boy here asking about a Jane Doe with a bullet hole in her right shoulder."

Whoever was on the other end must have been giving the receptionist a long and detailed reply because; besides the occasional "Hmm mhh" The receptionist was quiet for at least five minutes.

"Okay. Thank you." she put the phone down and addressed John. "They got the bullet out and she's in a stable condition, they want to keep her in for a few days."

John sighed.

"But as far as we are aware she has no family or next-of-kin. We're going to keep her overnight and in the morning, if no one has claimed her, the police will be called and a missing person will be issued."

She was stable. That was good. And definitely not metal. He left the hospital and returned to the house -but by this time it was well past midnight. When John walked through the front door his immediate thought was that the house was still empty but when he went into the kitchen he found his uncle sitting at the dinner table and scoffing down leftover macaroni cheese.

"Where've you been?" Derek asked between mouthfuls.

At first John considered telling his uncle the truth and easing his mind a little. He planned to tell him everything, not just that he'd foolishly taken a stranger to the hospital but that that stranger also looked exactly like Cameron but then he thought better of himself. His mother had reacted bad and he couldn't deal with another lecture.

"Out." Was all he said in a typical teenager manner.

"With your girlfriend?" Derek continued.

Derek thought he had been out with Riley. It was the perfect cover, so John just nodded his head and let Derek believe it was true and then tomorrow, when his mother returned and he would try and persuade her to break the human-Cameron out of hospital he would have to face the consequences of his lies. All he had left to that night was bid his uncle goodnight and go to bed.

Lying in the bedroom that was decorated for a seven year old, John finally took the time to really think about the events of the day. It had been ridiculous and panic-stricken and only he could go from making out with one girl to rushing another to the hospital in less than ten minutes. Sometimes he felt he had two lives. One for John Baum -where he was a normal teenager who spent too much time with his girlfriend and wasted an unreal amount of time hanging about in food courts and in parking lots. And one for John Connor -the future leader of the resistance. In this life he was frequently attacked by cyborgs and random girls turn up on his doorstep with bullets through their shoulders. But the girl who turned up tonight wasn't random. She was Cameron in human form. John couldn't explain it but hoped that maybe Cameron, the real Cameron, would help him out when she returned later that day.

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><p><strong>So this is my first fanfiction. I'm still unsure about the story so please, <em>please<em> review and tell me what you think.**


	2. The Definition of Love

When John woke up the next morning, the sun seeping through his closed curtains burned his irises. He rubbed his eyes and groaned, for the first few seconds he was very reluctant to get out of bed and tried to pull the covers over his head to go back to sleep. But then he remembered the events of yesterday. Making out with Riley, finding the human-Cameron then being forced to take the girl into hospital. The sleep that he was ready to admit defeat to a moment ago was suddenly non-existent. John jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. It was past midday so he hoped that his mum would be home, surely if she'd allowed Cameron to drive through the night the pair would have made it home. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt and headed out the room.

"There's blood on my bed." Came the sound of Cameron's voice the moment he'd left his bedroom.

It didn't surprise John that she was waiting outside his bedroom. It was something she did all the time, hanging around him in a weird way so she could protect him from any and all dangers that presented themselves. But John had always wondered what danger she could believe he would face in his bedroom with her and his mum downstairs and the burglar alarm defending the house from trespassers.

"Yeah, sorry about that." John replied. He was walked down the corridor, heading down the stairs with Cameron now walking by his side.

Even with his mind distracted by the human-Cameron lying in the hospital a few miles down the road, John was still very aware of the attraction he held for Cameron. He had never been able to understand his feelings for her. She was a machine, a robot, she was made of metal and was completely incapable of showing emotions or ever reciprocating his feelings. He cared for her in a way he'd never felt for a human and he knew, if she asked, he would happily give up his human life for her robotic one. Just being close to her made John aware of these feelings and even more aware that she could never feel the same.

"You said you found a girl. You said she got shot. Why did you take her into my room?" She asked.

John should have told her he'd taken the human girl into her room because, at the time, he'd believed it was her who'd taken the bullet but he wasn't ready to let anyone know the strange situation behind the story he'd told his mum. And he certainly didn't want to tell Cameron before he told his mum. He knew she was very likely to deem the girl a security risk and run off to slaughter her whilst she slept.

"I don't know I just…did." He said trying to shake her off.

"You owe me new sheets." She told him in a toneless voice with an expressionless face. She didn't seem too bothered about the situation but then Cameron was a machine so her actions rarely mimicked her words.

In the living room downstairs, a girl of around fourteen was asleep on the sofa. She had short blonde hair and a pointed face but most of her features were hidden by the red blanket she slept under. John's mum was in the kitchen drinking something from a plain white mug.

"What happened to Cameron's bed?" Was the first thing she asked when he entered the room.

What was it and everyone's new found obsession with Cameron's bed? He'd never heard anyone mention it once in his whole life and he'd been asked about it twice since waking up that morning.

"Why? Cameron just asked me the same thing." He asked in a slightly annoyed tone.

"I was going to let Jenny sleep in their last night but the bed's covered in blood."

Okay, that did make sense and now John felt kind of stupid for not figuring out that that was the reason everyone was so bothered about it.

"The girl I told you about last night. I put her on it." John admitted.

The effect of his words were instantly noticeable. His mother put the mug she was holding on the counter and folded her arms in a disapproving manner. But before she had time to say anything John started talking;

"I know what you're going to say but she was dying. I couldn't just watch that happen. I had to do something!"

"Not at the expense of your own life." His mum replied. But John wasn't having any of it.

"What would that have made me?" He said, raising his voice. "If I'd just watched her die? If I'd let her die I would have been no better than the machines. It would have been the worst thing I could have _ever _done."

As John spoke the memory of Sarkissian came into his mind, of John holding his arm around his neck until all the air had left his lungs, until his neck had snapped, killing him instantly. John murdering Sarkissian was the worse thing he had ever done. He knew his mum was thinking about the same thing.

"And if you had died it would have been over. Everything-Everything we've worked for." His mum spoke more calm now.

"Just…just help me get her out of the hospital please." John told her.

There was an awkward silence between them and John saw his mum trying to look in every direction but his eye line before she finally plucked up the courage to speak again;

"No John. We can't risk it."

She moved around him, intending on leaving the room but John grabbed her wrist. He needed her to help him.

"You don't understand. There's something…" His eyes looked up at the ceiling and he wondered if Cameron could hear them talking through the floor. "There's something you need to see about this girl."

"I said no." His mother sighed and removed his hand from his grip. "I won't endanger your life to break a complete stranger out of hospital." She left the room but John was unconvinced. He knew as soon as he told his mum that the girl looked exactly the same as Cameron that she would be eager to break her out of hospital. He just had to find a time where he could tell his mum without Cameron listening in.

John followed his mum into the living room. Apparently she'd just woken up the girl on the couch -Jenny, because she was sitting on one half of the couch and Jenny was stretching her arms and yawning on the other.

Whenever John saw his mother in these types of situations he expected the unwitting human to freak out or try to run but his mum always had a way of putting people at ease. And whether that was because this girl had seen what was chasing her or that his mum's presence was just soothing he couldn't be sure. Although he assumed it was the first excuse.

"When can I go home?" Jenny asked in a sickeningly sweet voice.

"Once it's safe." John's mum told her.

"And when will that be?"

"I don't know."

Jenny didn't reply. Her attention was caught by the sound of combat boots clunking down the stairs. John was standing behind the sofa, where Jenny couldn't see him, but when Cameron stopped at the bottom of the stairs she stared right at John.

"Do you like my top? Jenny gave it to me" She asked. This was one of those creepy moments were Cameron acted almost human. She held the bottom of her top out to show it off and John noticed that it was different from the one she'd been wearing when they spoke upstairs. The top was green, short sleeved with "Your boyfriend wants me." written in bolt white letters on the front. John wondered if Cameron was aware of what the slogan actually meant.

"It's tight." She told him, which only solidified the theory John had, she didn't have a clue what the slogan meant.

Despite her display of ignorance, John's eyes couldn't stay on Cameron for long. They drifted to Jenny who was now looking at John with wide eyes and biting her lip. John smiled awkwardly at her but this only seemed to spur the weird on, she turned bright red and then turned back to Cameron. John stared at the back of her head with one eyebrow raised and wondered what the hell had just happened. But then he decided there were more important things to think about and shook the encounter off.

For the next hour John desperately searched for a moment when he could get his mum and private and explain the full extend of the situation. But in her usual manner, Cameron followed him around everywhere he went. John had never been more aware of her presence than now, when he was trying to rid himself of it.

When his mum went upstairs to change Cameron's bed sheets, John seized his chance to get his mother on her own. He slipped into the room and found his mum trying to put a pillow into a new case.

"What do you want?" She asked in a short-tempered tone.

"I need to talk to you." John replied.

"If you're going to start on going to the hospital again I don't want to hear it."

"Believe me mum, you'll want to hear this."

His mum threw the pillow down on the bed in frustration.

"What?" She was close to shouting.

"The girl…she's not just a normal girl mum. She looks like Cameron."

John expected his mum to suddenly show signs of understanding but instead she looked unimpressed.

"So?" She asked, trying to get more out of him.

He walked towards her in urgency.

"I don't just mean she looks similar to her, like they could be related or something. She was completely identical in everyway."

Finally the look of shock he'd been craving for dawned on his mums face. She pursed her lips and raked her fingers through her hair.

"What do you mean?" She asked in confusion.

"Mum!" John was getting impatient now. "This girl was the spitting image of Cameron. Like…I don't know, Cameron was modelled on her or something. Please, we can't leave her at the hospital. We have to find out who she is."

She didn't say anything, just stared at him. John waited for a reply, for any recognition of his words and then finally she nodded her head and started talking;

"Okay. We'll get her out. I'll call Derek and the two of us will go down to the hospital and break her out-"

"What? No. I want to come." John exclaimed. He was sick of always being treated like the child.

"No!" She told him firmly. "You've caused enough trouble, you shouldn't have taken her to the hospital in the first place."

"She would have died if I hadn't!" Was everyone incapable of seeing he was left with no choice.

"You put yourself at risk." She told him, angrily.

"I'm not having this argument again! I did what I thought was right." He too was angry. But she wasn't taking the bait. Her anger somehow seized in an instant.

"When you stop acting like a child. I'll stop treating you like one."

She went to leave the room but, with the door half open, stopped and looked around at him.

"Stay with Cameron. Don't let her know where we've gone."

John didn't reply and his mum didn't speak again. He waited for the click of the door closing then sat down on the edge of the bed. He was so tired of always being treated like he was about to break into a million pieces. He had a great future and he understood that he had to be alive in order to fulfil his future but how was he ever going to become the John Connor that everyone wanted from him if he was always stuck in the house. He buried his face in his hands and sighed.

"The police suspect that Jennifer was taken from her home in San Francisco. It is not confirmed but it is believed that a struggle must have taken place-" Half an hour later John picked up the television remote and made the face of the news reporter disappear from inside the television screen. Jenny looked around in surprise and, without uttering a word, John threw himself down on the couch next to her. For a moment nothing was said and John was very aware of her wide eyes on him. He tried not to concentrate on how uncomfortable she made him feel and instead tried to ease her pain a little.

"I know it seems bad now but it's better to be here with her-" John indicated to the front door, Cameron was outside keeping guard. "-around than out there by yourself." He spoke with a false smile.

Jenny bowed her head and John wondered briefly if she was trying to stop herself crying but when she looked up she looked more serious than upset.

"What is she?" Jenny asked in a barely audible voice.

"Ehh." John struggled to fully establish just what Cameron was. He didn't feel it was enough to just say she was a machine. If he said that then she might misunderstand and not realise that she was more than a Terminator. That she was capable of so much more than a Terminator. "She's complicated. In San Francisco, did you see what was chasing you?"

Jenny's face change instantly. It was calm before, with a peachy red complexion. But when John mentioned the machine that was after her all the colour drained from her face.

"It was a man. He was tall, with blonde hair. When I got home he was waiting for me and I was so sure he was going to kill me but then Sarah -your mum- she appeared and she was shooting him but he didn't stop. Your mum told me to run. I looked back, but only for a moment. His face looked like it was…I don't know…falling off or something. And underneath was metal and a red eye." When she looked at John again she was crying. John didn't know how to make her stop so he just ignored her and explained her situation.

"It's called a Terminator. It's a cy- robot from the future-" Jenny interrupted by snorting and John was glad to see she wasn't dwelling on her sadness.

"I'm being serious!" John said in an almost amused face.

Jenny nodded her head sarcastically and John continued;

"It's been sent here to kill you because, in the future, you're important to the human resistance."

"Why does the human's need a resistance?" She asked but John was sure she was simply trying to amuse him. John did not smile, he suddenly realised that he had said too much. How could he possibly tell this innocent fourteen year old what was in store for the world. So he smiled and pretended he was making it up.

"I dunno. I was just…trying to cheer you up." He told her.

She smiled widely and shifted on the couch. John noticed that she had, somehow, got herself closer to John, although he wasn't really sure how. At that moment Cameron walked through the front door. She flicked her long, brown hair with her hand and tilted her head slightly. It was a trait, John had figured out, that usually meant she was confused.

"Where's your mother?" She asked in a loud voice.

"She went to the store." John lied. Although he hated lying to her he wanted to wait till his mum got back with the human-Cameron before telling Cameron the truth.

"What for?" Cameron didn't look convinced.

"Milk." John replied. It was the first thing that came to his mind.

"We have six litres of milk. That's sufficient. Where is she John?"

He felt guilty for lying to her but stuck to his story. He wouldn't spill the truth and have Cameron running off to the hospital to ruin everything.

"Like I said, she's at the store." A lump was forming in his throat but he refused to back down. She stared at him for a moment then turned and walked out of the house again.

John slumped back on the couch and exhaled deeply. He was sure Cameron could always tell when he was lying and the pathetic performance he'd just put on made John realise there wasn't a reason why she wouldn't be able to tell. He really was a pathetic liar.

"Is she a robot?" Jenny's voice suddenly asked.

John turned to look at her, shocked by her intuition and wondering how stupid he must be to ever believe Cameron was human if a fourteen year old could figure it out so quickly. John didn't know how to reply. Should he reveal the truth and deal with the possibility of scaring her half to death or should he lie to her too and give her a false sense of security?

"Yes." John said involuntarily, answering his own question and hers at the same time.

John expected Jenny to freak out but instead she calmly nodded her head and John suspected that she knew what Cameron was before she'd asked John. Trying to put her mind at ease, John turned the television back on and handed the remote to Jenny. She turned it over to the Disney channel and started watching Hannah Montana -to John's dismay. He didn't leave though, he just kind of slouched against the couch and zoned out.

"John!" His mum sounded scared and panicked. But he couldn't find her voice. "John!" She shouted again.

"Mum?" John shouted back but she didn't answer.

A sharp shove woke him from his slumber and he opened his eyes to find his mum standing in front of him.

"John!" She shouted again.

"I'm up." He told her.

John sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes. He'd fallen asleep, he wondered how long he'd been that way. Quite a while considering it was now dark outside. His mum was here! Suddenly John remembered where his mum had been.

"Did you get her?" John jumped up from the couch and turned in the spot.

On the stairs, bloodstained and clearly struggling, Derek was carrying the human-Cameron's body up to the second floor. She was wearing a hospital gown and a sling on her arm. Somehow she looked paler than she had before.

"You got her!" He exclaimed and followed Derek up the stairs.

His uncle lay the girl down on John's multi-coloured children's bed. She didn't look seriously injured, like she had an infection, which was good. Minus the small crimson stain on her gown, she could have easily been asleep. Derek took a step back and looked down at her body with an odd expression on his face. John couldn't tell if it was sadness or annoyance and he didn't ask. Derek left the room in silence. A moment later John's mum came into the room, John turned to look at her and she leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms.

"You should have told me who she was." She told him sternly.

"I didn't know how Cameron would react." He replied.

"I'm not Cameron! I'm your mother."

John wanted to apologies, he wasn't used to being in trouble from his mother but instead he held his ground and remained silent.

"You're grounded." She told him in a serious tone. "And…you're sleeping on the couch. She can have your bed-" She nodded at the human-Cameron. " and Jenny's in Cameron's bed."

After that, John's mum left. Not wanting to leave the human-Cameron alone John took a seat by her bedside and started contemplating the person she would be when she woke. He wondered what her name was, what her story was and where she came from. Did she have family? And what was her relation to Cameron? The questions only made him more eager for her to wake up.

Some time into the night, whilst John was half a sleep, the door creaked. When John opened his eyes it was to find Cameron staring down at the human-Cameron's body. She was still wearing her "Your boyfriend wants me" shirt and John was very aware of her fingers twitching by her side.

"What are you doing?" John asked sleepily.

"Thinking." Cameron replied.

John sat up right in his seat.

"Thinking about what?"

"Her." She said simply. "Who is she?"

"You don't know?" John was surprised to discover this information.

"Why would I know?" Cameron turned to look him in the eye.

"I don't know." John said sarcastically. "Maybe because the pair of you are identical."

Cameron was silent for a moment. She turned back to look at the girl in the bed before finally saying; "I don't know everything." And leaving the room.

John stayed by the human-Cameron's bed for two days, watching and waiting for the moment she would wake from her drug-induced slumber. Sometimes John wondered if she would ever actually wake up but in those weak moments he remembered Cameron telling him that all the girl's vital signs were normal and that her wound wasn't infected. She just needed to rest but John was finding it impossibly hard to grant her that favour. He was too eager to find out who she was and what why she'd tracked him down. He wanted to know if her name was also Cameron or if she was addressed by something completely different. John still found himself trying to place a name to her face. He thought Laura, Gwen, Anna, Lucy but none of them seemed right. In truth, the only name John could put to the human-Cameron's face was Cameron. He would just have to be patient.

Everyday at noon and at five his mum would bring him a plate of food and everyday he would eat it without leaving the seat he'd placed beside the bed. He wanted to be there for the moment the girl woke up. At about nine PM on the second day of waiting John finally saw the flickering of the human-Cameron's eyelids.

His heart suddenly burst with anticipation, seemingly doubling the number of beats per second, and he watched her groan and shift her head uncomfortable against the pillow. For a moment she settled again and John was about to shake it off as a false alarm when he saw her screw up her eyes and slowly open them. She blinked several times and then looked at the room around her. John leaned forward in his chair, close enough so that he was in her eye line and the human-Cameron registered his presence instantly. She stared right at him, first emotionless but then she looked confused.

"John." She whispered with a groggy voice.

She knew him, she recognised him. John knew that she was at least familiar with him because he'd heard her call his name before he'd taken her to the hospital. But now she was actually registering him.

"Yeah." John reassured her.

She tried to sit up in the bed but was instantly stricken with the pain from the wound on her shoulder. She let out a small moan and fell back against the bed -completely shocked to find her shoulder aching. The girl put her hand to her top and pulled it away to examine the blood-stained bandage underneath. She stared at it in complete awe, silent at first but then what sounded like sobs began to fill the room.

"What happened?" She asked.

"You were shot. You probably shouldn't move." John told her.

The girl lay motionless on the bed again and stared up at the ceiling. She didn't speak for a moment and John wondered if she was trying to remember who shot her. John wanted to know the same thing but there were more pressing issues on his mind.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Allison-" John remained motionless as the name Alison disrupted a memory in his mind.

_Cameron stood by a foosball table wearing a mini-dress and denim waist coat. what the hell was she doing? John didn't understand. As she ducked down to take the ball out from under the table he stormed towards her, annoyed but glad he'd finally tracked her down._

"_Hey." Cameron looked up in surprise. "What the hell are you doing?"_

_She smiled and looked down at the table as if it were obvious._

"_Playing foosball." The words came out in a sarcastic tone. John remembered finding that strange._

"_We've gotta go." He spoke in a hushed voice because he was worried about attracting attention but still Cameron didn't realise who he was._

"_Go? where?" She was confused. Obviously something was wrong with her chip again._

"_Home." John attempted to explain but was gradually getting more annoyed._

"_Home?" Cameron seemed more shocked with every word he spoke. "Who are you?" That was it, John knew there had to be something wrong with her chip now. There was nothing on the planet that could make her willingly stop protecting him._

"_Cameron…" He sighed in frustration._

"_My name's Allison." Cameron told him confidently. _

Allison. At the time John had no idea what it was that made Cameron suddenly change her name. He still didn't know why but at least now he understood why she'd chosen the name Allison. The human Allison, the one that lay in front of John, _must _have been who Cameron was modelled on.

"-I was sent here to find you." She told him half-heartedly.

"Sent by who?" John asked.

"You." Of course. The great Future-John who basically controlled John's entire life. Was it normal to be jealous of himself?

"Okay…But why?"

"I don't know." Allison grimaced with pain as she spoke. John didn't like the idea of causing more pain than she was already in so he didn't press the matter for the time and let her go back to sleep.

Downstairs, Cameron and John's mum were still trying to baby-sit Jenny. When John entered the room Jenny's mood instantly changed. Before she'd been slumped over with an expression of distaste on her face, now she stood straight, smiled and twisted a strand of hair between her fingers. The initial shock of Jenny's actions had worn off now. Over the last few days she'd been acting weird every time John entered the room and John had come to the simple conclusion of her having a crush on him.

"How's the patient?" His mum asked without looking up from the paper she held in her hand.

"Better I think. She was awake earlier but she's sleeping again." Whilst John spoke his eyes moved to Cameron -who sat perfectly straight on the couch next to Jenny. She didn't seem bothered in the slightest by Allison's presence but John knew now that the pair had some connection.

Where Cameron didn't pay any attention to John and just stared at the wall in front of her, Jenny was now biting her lip and trying desperately to catch John's attention. He looked at her with furrowed eyebrows and she somehow took this as a hint that she could now start talking rubbish to him;

"You're mum says that I can go home soon. I was thinking maybe you could come and spend sometime in San Francisco."

John sort of opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish gagging for water before finally coming up with some excuse to let her down gentle.

"Thanks but I think I should stay here with Allison."

"Allison?" Both Cameron and Sarah asked at the same time.

"Yeah it's her name." John told them. His mum accepted this, nodded her head then returned to the papers in her hand but Cameron suddenly looked… John couldn't quite describe the expression on her face but if he had to he would say she almost looked worried.

"…anyway-" Jenny ignored the sudden tension in the room. "maybe when she feels better you could come up for the weekend."

John felt bad rejecting her twice. Her cheery disposition was something he wasn't used to. It was like a warmth on a cold day, almost soothing. He couldn't extinguish that warmth;

"Yeah, maybe."

She positively beamed at him.

"Great. That's great." She said.

John smiled at her, which he then regretted because it only seemed to egg her on. He heard a muffled laughter from his mother and when he turned to look in her direction he found her trying hard not to laugh. He couldn't believe that she was laughing at him. Sarah Connor -the hard nut who was serious _all _the time was actually laughing at him.

"I like your bracelet." Cameron was speaking to Jenny. When John turned to look at her, he saw Cameron pick up Jenny's wrist and examine a bracelet of different coloured beads. Jenny didn't look comfortable with Cameron touching her but then again, she wasn't snatching her hand away which was a good sign. John had an inkling that Cameron's copy-cat appearance made her a lot less threatening than the T-888 that was out to kill Jenny.

"Thanks. My sister got it for me." Jenny took her wrist back and started playing with the beads.

Without saying goodbye Cameron stood up and disappeared through the front door. John watched her go and then turned back to Jenny. She was still staring at him with a smile on her face and his mother wasn't any better, she was ignoring him completely. John wanted to follow Cameron, to find out what she was doing but didn't want to seem desperate. He waited five minutes before also walking through the door.

She wasn't on the front porch so there was only one other place she could be. He walked down the gravel driveway and pulled the shed door open. Inside, Cameron was prodding her index finger with a needle."When you were talking to her to Jenny, her pulse rate increased." Cameron told him without turning to look at him.

"What?" John asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Jenny's pulse elevated when you were in the room. Why?" She turned to look at him.

"Because she has a crush on me." John told her with a smile.

Cameron put down the needle and turned to face him. She seemed confused and tilted her head.

"Crush?"

"Yeah." He moved towards her, amused that they were having this conversation. "She fancies me."

"I don't understand." She told him.

"Emm…you know what love is?" He was trying to break it down for her. But even still he felt incredibly awkward having this conversation. Feeling the way he felt about Cameron was bad enough, but being hit so bluntly with her lack of emotions was so much worse.

"Love. Affection. Fondness. Adoration. A romantic or sexual attachment."

"Have you been reading the Dictionary again?"

"I don't sleep. Does Jenny love you?"

"No, no!" John almost shouted, trying to make it clear that nothing could ever happen between John and Jenny. "A crush is like… liking someone more than a friend but not so much that you love them."

Realisation finally dawned on Cameron's face. She nodded her head and spoke;

"Thank you for explaining." She turned back to the table.

"My finger's been twitching. I don't know why." She told him.

"Let me have a look." John walked towards her and picked up the needle. He prodded her left ring finger and her index finger twitched. And when he prodded her pinkie finger her ring finger twitched. There was definitely some damage but John couldn't be sure how bad it was without having a proper look. Whilst trying to figure out what they could do, John felt Cameron's fingers brush along his wrist and up his forearm for a spilt second. Instantly goose bumps rippled across his skin but seconds later her touch was gone.

"There's damage but I can't really be sure without having a good look." John said.

In response to his words Cameron picked up a razor blade and touched her wrist with it. John grabbed her hand before she could slice her wrist open.

"I think we should wait till later tonight, after Jenny's gone to bed."

Cameron nodded her head and dropped the razor. John wanted to get back to see how Allison was so dropped the needle and walked towards the door. With one hand on the door handle John heard Cameron speak again;

"John." She sounded disinterested but John turned in response anyway. "When I touched you, your pulse rate increased." She didn't sound confrontational or as if she were making fun of him. In fact, she genuinely sounded intrigued. John, on the other hand, sudden found himself angry and bitter. He hated her. Hated her for being a machine. For not understanding. For never understanding. He hated her for being everything he could never had, and he hated himself for loving her regardless.


End file.
